Background
John Moore was born on June 24, 1834, at Rosmead, County Westmeath, Ireland, of respectable parentage, his mother being an O'Farrell of Scurlockstown.
John Moore was born on June 24, 1834, at Rosmead, County Westmeath, Ireland, of respectable parentage, his mother being an O'Farrell of Scurlockstown.
On completion of his elementary schooling, he emigrated in 1848 to Charleston, South Carolina, where he attended the Collegiate Institute and the Seminary of St. John the Baptist.
In 1851, he was sent by Bishop Ignatius Reynolds to the College of Courbrée in France, from which, four years later, he proceeded to the Urban College in Rome.
Ordained there by Monsignor Luigi Busso, April 9, 1860, he returned to Charleston where he served as a curate at St. Finbar's Cathedral during the Civil War. Like his ordinary, Bishop P. N. Lynch, he was a stout Confederate, and his aggressive Southern sympathies were not abated by the destruction of church properties by Northern forces. He refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, and thereafter his mail was censored by the commander of the fleet in Charleston harbor. Despite various inconveniences, however, he managed his parish with the assistance of a single priest and attended the dying and wounded of both sides as confessor and nurse.
At the end of the war he commenced a twelve-year rectorship of St. Patrick's Church, during the last few years of which he also served as vicar-general.
On the death of Augustine Verot, he was appointed second bishop of St. Augustine and consecrated by Bishop Lynch in St. John's Pro-Cathedral, May 13, 1877. Simple, studious, he proved a successful administrator. Without immigration, Catholic growth was slow, yet his tenure was marked by an increase of priests from twelve to thirty-one, of whom a larger proportion were English speaking, by the erection of a number of churches and parochial schools, the founding of a Colored Institute, the establishment of St. Leo's Benedictine College for boys and an orphanage at Jacksonville, and the introduction of the Jesuits into southern Florida.
In 1887, the cathedral was burned and the Bishop brought to light old plans for a cathedral drawn by Renwick, the architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, in harmony with the Spanish tradition of St. Augustine. Seeking financial aid in the North, he obtained generous assistance in rebuilding from Henry M. Flagler, who was engaged in the development of Florida. In Jacksonville he is especially remembered for his courageous work in the yellowfever epidemic of 1888. He encouraged immigration to the state and fostered harmonious relations with other denominations. Somewhat liberal in his views, he befriended Fathers Burtsell and McGlynn of New York, actually interceding for McGlynn in Rome. He was a member of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884, and was named along with Bishop Joseph Dwenger of Fort Wayne to carry its decrees to Rome. There, despite the doubts expressed by Bishops McQuaid of Rochester and Richard Gilmour of Cleveland (who was later also accredited by Cardinal Gibbons), he was largely successful in obtaining papal ratification. As a self-sacrificing bishop of an obscure diocese, however, he naturally had little part in the national affairs of the church. John Moore died on July 30, 1901, in St. Augustine, Florida.
The second Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida in 1877 - 1901, John Moore was very influential in the expansion of Catholic schools in Florida and recruitment of numerous religious nuns and priests to meet the ministerial needs of the diocese which encompassed the entire state at that time. Bishop Moore High School, a Catholic secondary school in Orlando, is named for him.
